The Biden administration claims to be pushing for a “temporary ceasefire” between Israel and Hezbollah to avert a larger conflict, but this is very late in the day and it is not a serious effort to prevent a new war in Lebanon. It is at best a desperate, last-minute exercise in going through the motions of diplomacy. The administration would like to pretend that it is a passive bystander pleading from the sidelines instead of the chief patron and arms supplier of the main belligerent in the conflict, and it designs its entreaties to be toothless so that Israel can safely ignore them.
The US has refused to exert any pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the last eleven months, and it has continued supplying Israel with weapons no matter how those weapons have been used to commit war crimes against Palestinians. Now US officials say that they don’t want further escalation in Lebanon, but once again the administration won’t back up those words with action. The US could use its leverage to rein Israel in and insist on the de-escalation that the administration says that it wants, but the president has shown that he has no interest in doing that.
The empty Gaza ceasefire negotiations prove as much. The Gaza ceasefire talks have become an interminable process designed to lead nowhere. The administration has catered to the Netanyahu government’s preferences at every turn. Each time that Netanyahu adds new deal-breakers or otherwise seeks to derail negotiations with new attacks, the administration has dutifully taken his side and pretended that Hamas is the sole obstacle to securing an agreement. The US cannot be a credible diplomatic actor in the region when its primary role is acting as Netanyahu’s PR agent.
The Israeli government assumes that the US won’t withhold weapons, diplomatic support, or military protection under any circumstances, and that has encouraged Netanyahu to pursue increasingly aggressive goals. Because the US shields Israel from military reprisals, as it did earlier this year during Iran’s missile and drone strikes, it has given Netanyahu free rein to lash out whenever and wherever he wants. The administration has dressed all of this up as preventing a wider regional war, but the reality is that they have simply delayed the conflagration while making it more likely that it will be even more destructive when it occurs.
The total failure of the administration’s policy is there for all to see. The region is likely facing a new Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and that invasion will have serious destabilizing effects on the wider region. This is the disaster that the US has claimed to oppose all along, but in practice it has done nothing to stop it. Had the US truly wanted the war in Gaza not to spread, it would have demanded a lasting ceasefire months ago. Had the US wanted to prevent escalation in Lebanon, it would be cutting off arms transfers and pulling back its forces from the region rather than rushing more troops to the Middle East. Instead the US has done everything that one would expect it to do if it wished to set the region ablaze.
The US is at great risk of being ensnared in this larger war. It is imperative that the US avoid direct involvement in Israel’s conflicts. The US has no vital interests at stake in these fights. The president has no authority to involve US forces directly. It is not the responsibility of the United States to bail out a reckless client state when it gets in over its head. The quickest way to force the Israeli government to deescalate is to deprive it of the support and protection that it takes for granted.
Once the current crisis is over, US foreign policy in the region has to be radically overhauled. To avoid future entanglements in the wars of client states, the US should downgrade its relationships with the Middle Eastern governments that rely heavily on US weapons supplies and protection. The US has no formal commitments to defend these states, and it should not extend security guarantees to any of them. The US also needs to reduce its military presence in the region to the bare minimum required to secure our embassies. Decades of extensive US military involvement in this part of the world have been ruinous for the countries of the region and for American interests, and it is in the best interests of all concerned for the US to get out.
Daniel Larison is a columnist for Responsible Statecraft. He is contributing editor at Antiwar.com and former senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @DanielLarison and at his blog, Eunomia, here.
